Following the recommendation of IBS Directors Axel Timmermann, Nary Kim (SNU) and Yannis Semertzidis (KAIST), the Institute for Basic Science Headquarter launched its first Gender Equality Committee. The committee met on July 13th to discuss ways to improve working conditions and work/life balance for women within IBS. The objective of the team is to develop and implement policies that make IBS a discrimination-free equal opportunity workspace.

Axel Timmermann, Director of IBS Center for Climate Physics, involved in a new research study on the diversity of ancestral populations of Homo sapiens in Africa. This study led by a scientific consortium was founded that human ancestors were scattered across Africa, and largely kept apart by a combination of diverse habitats and shifting environmental boundaries, such as forests and deserts. Millennia of separation gave rise to a staggering diversity of human forms, whose mixing ultimately shaped our species.

Axel Timmermann, Director of the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) Center for Climate Physics, was invited to give a keynote presentation during the 2018 STRONG KOREA Forum in Seoul. The 2018 STRONG KOREA Forum was held at the Millennium Hotel in Seoul on May 31st, 2018. Several hundred people from the science, policy, education and technology sectors in South Korea attended this event, including the Minister for Science and ICT.

In May, the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) signed a Collaboration Agreement with the University of Bergen to take part in the Advanced Climate Education and Research (ACER) project. ACER is an international collaborative effort to promote world-class climate research and education.

Dedicated to the mystery of Vincent van Gogh’s death, watching the first fully painted movie, ‘Loving Vincent’, is a truly enchanting experience. IBS scientists created their own interpretation of Van Gogh’s art, where oil color brushes are replaced by contour lines of atmospheric flow simulated on a supercomputer.

ICCP was the main organizer of the IBS Conference on Climate Change and Human Migration which was held from November 27th to December 1st in the Paradise Hotel in Busan. This conference brought together world-leading experts in climate change, anthropology, archaeology, genetics, food security, social sciences, and climate justice to discuss the issue of climate-induced human migration.

The IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) hosted an ENSO Complexity Workshop from October 16th to the 20th, which was attended by 42 researchers from ten different countries. The workshop was special not only because it brought together many of the world’s leading experts on the El Niño - Southern Oscillation, but also because it had a unique format. In addition to sharing and discussing the forefront of ENSO research, the participants came together with the mission of writing a community review paper.

From September 11th to 22nd 2017, ICCP Director Axel Timmermann and Jung-Eun Chu, a postdoctoral researcher at ICCP, participated in the Advanced Climate Dynamics Courses (ACDC) summer school held inside the Rondane National Park in Norway.

The ACDC summer schools are organized by the University of Bergen (UoB) in collaboration with North American partner universities and are sponsored by the Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Education Partnership Program and the Norwegian Research School on Changing Climate in the coupled Earth System (CHESS).

New study shows that difference in water temperature between the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans together with global warming impact the risk of drought and wildfire in southwestern North America

An international team of climate researchers from the US, South Korea and the UK has developed a new wildfire and drought prediction model for southwestern North America. Extending far beyond the current seasonal forecast, this study published in the journal Scientific Reports could benefit the economies with a variety of applications in agriculture, water management and forestry.